INTRODUCTION

At last year’s
JSCOPE the main topic revolved around the topic of preemptive war. Many of us
here took part in lengthy discussions and presentations analyzing the ethics of
preemption.Coming away from the
conference, CPT Osborn and I couldn’t help but feel that although this question
of preemption was both important and valid, and did in fact bear addressing,
much of what was discussed lacked relevance to our present situation as
uniformed military officers; finding ourselves already taking part in a
major military conflict.Since, at the
end of the conference, one could safely conclude that the current conflict in
Iraq did not meet traditional just war criteria, it compelled us to ask, “if I,
as a uniformed member of the armed forces, find myself taking part in a
conflict that does not meet traditional just war criteria for preemptive war,
then, what do I do?” It is our contention that this moral dilemma has gone
relatively under-addressed in the contemporary analysis of military ethics, yet
is a significant concern for a large segment of the population comprising
today’s armed forces.This segment of
which we speak is that of the junior leader (Lieutenant, Captain, junior
Non-Commissioned Officer); those of us directly involved in regulating ethical
conduct in war at the tactical level, who still cannot help but look to the
strategic and political levels of jus ad
bellum;those of us who are
simultaneously just as concerned with why we fight as with how we fight. What
then is the proper course of action for a morally concerned junior leader who
finds himself involved in what he determines to be an unjust war?Let us clearly define the moral dilemma.The primary difficulty at hand exists between
the leader’s sworn duty to defend the Constitution and his opposing duty not to
participate in an unjust war.In
essence, this dilemma forces us to consider and determine which is the higher
duty to uphold, and furthermore, under what set of conditions, if any, may the seemingly
higher duty be countermanded.We seek in
this paper to investigate the ethical interplay between these potentially
conflicting moral duties and to shed light upon the sets of conditions that
impact this delicate dilemma, from ethical and legal implications to one’s
devotion and duty to the troops entrusted to one’s care.From this investigation we hope to arrive at
a clearer ethical understanding of the issue at hand, to stimulate much needed
discussion regarding this issue, and perhaps to set forth several normative
guidelines for the consideration of our fellow junior leaders.

DEFINING/CLARIFYING THE MORAL DILEMMA

From the day soldiers enter the
military, they are instructed on the importance of loyalty and duty.The Army has a dictated hierarchy of
loyalty.First, soldiers must be loyal
to the Constitution of the United States, then to the office of the President,
followed by loyalty to one’s unit and chain of command, and finally, to one’s
self.Although this provides clear
instruction to some, it fails to address an important component of loyalty,
namely, the ethical struggles that are bound to arise in a craft that directly
concerns infliction of casualties upon a determined enemy.

Along with
instruction on loyalty, soldiers are also informed and educated on the
importance of ethical conduct in war, or what is more traditionally referred to
as jus in bello.FM 27-10, “The Law of Land Warfare,” explicitly
lays out what is considered to be ethical and unethical conduct in war under a
traditional just war model.Furthermore,
soldiers going into combat are given an explicit R.O.E. or “rules of
engagement” by commanders to guard against the chance of harm to
noncombatants.The general, underlying
assumption in both of these cases is that the jus ad bellum aspect of
war is already in good order; that the war in which the soldier finds himself
is already adequately justified in terms of the just war tradition, leaving his
ethical concerns to fall solely on the fight at hand.What is not often considered is the scenario
in which a soldier finds himself in a war that is not justified by
traditional just war criteria.It is at
this point that the soldier and leader
feel a conflict of loyalty between defending the Constitutionand
obeying the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, and his personal commitment
toward ethical conduct.

This dilemma is
even more distressing for the ethically concerned junior leader because he is
concerned with more than just himself.This leader often has a greater concern for the welfare of the few
soldiers under his command than for his own.Let it be understood that, even though a battalion, brigade, or division
commander is indeed concerned about the welfare of his troops, and very much
so, the junior leader is still the one to whom the senior leader has entrusted
this welfare.Therefore the junior
leader is greatly torn between maintaining the good order and discipline of his
unit (which contributes to the overall well-being of the troops) and ensuring
the ethical welfare of his soldiers. At this point, a junior leader may begin
to think, for the first time, that it is permissible to participate in an
unjust war in order to safeguard his troops.The ethically concerned leader may even begin to think that it would be
immoral to abandon his soldiers. The
sentiment for many is simply, “My troops need me.”Although that may sound a bit presumptuous,
the commitment to one’s soldiers is evident.

WHY NOT JUST GET OUT?

Speaking at great length with some of
our civilian peers on the topic of the war in Iraq and more specifically on
this particular dilemma of being uniformed officers taking part in a war
initiated on what was at best ethically ambiguous grounds, the question that
often has come up is, “why not just get out?” After all, if we do in fact
concede that the current military conflict of which we are a part lacks
sufficient ethical justification from a traditional just war standpoint, then
would it not seem a sensible ethical course of action to resign our commissions
or at least assert conscientious objector status and refuse to fight in this
particular conflict? Although this option might seem like an adequate solution
to our civilian counterparts, we find such recourse to be overly simplistic.

To determine whether
or not to remain in the military, several considerations may affect a leader’s
decision.These factors range from
personal ability to achieve a local impact in one’s unit, to the evaluation of
the greatest net good that can be achieved from either decision, as well as
concern for the soldiers entrusted to his care.Within each of these instances, there is ananalytical
discourse that must be perpetually considered throughout one’s involvement in
the conflict.

Since war is by no means static, both
in a tangible as well as an ethical sense, a leader must continually evaluate
his involvement in an unjustly begun conflict.When faced with such a dilemma, one must consider what factors are at
play in balancing these conflicting moral obligations.The overall analysis of the dilemma for the
morally concerned leader, we contend, ought to come down to a gauged spectrum
of response to varying degrees of un-justness. That is to say, that all unjust
wars are not equal in terms of their ethical status; that some unjust wars are
clearly more unjust than others; and that a leader’s actions (to stay
in, get out, speak out, etc.) should follow in proportion to the degree by
which traditional just war standards have been violated.For instance, one may ask, “Is this
particular conflict a clear, irrefutable violation of Jus ad Bellum or
is it ethically ambiguous? Have all Jus ad Bellum criteria been unmet or
just one or more?Is this as gross a
display of preemption as Germany’s 1939 Invasion of Poland or is it
less severe and to what extent? Although some may think that ‘degrees of
unjustness’ is a ridiculous concept, these same people would most likely prefer
to be unjustly kicked in the shin than to be unjustly run over by a truck.When it comes to internal moral dissonance,
this may be the best means by which to determine the most acceptable course of
action to follow.

When weighing this concept, several
elements must be considered.One must
first evaluate the viability of invincible ignorance. A leader must ask
himself, “to what degree am I politically informed and knowledgeable about jus
ad bellum issues, and to what degree ought I be informed on these
issues? To what extent is my lack of
political knowledge and influence on this particular conflict sufficient in
justifying my continued involvement in this (unjustly begun) war?” All of these questions play a role in the
leader’s assessment of the interplay between invincible ignorance and personal
responsibility.A moral leader must then
continually evaluate the external effect of the war, gauging whether the
resulting net good outweighs the original immoral conduct of going to war in
the first place.Having acknowledged
that a jus ad bellum standard has already been broken, one’s ethics
shift from an objectivist to a more utilitarian mode of ethical judgment.For
instance, if the immorally begun conflict yields such goods as the ousting of a
cruel, despotic dictator, the furtherance of democracy, and the propagation of
human rights, an adequate consequentialist argument can be made for the junior leader
to continue service.Ifhowever, the immorally begun conflict fails to
yield such goods, while at the same time resulting in further just war
violations, progressively worse ethical conduct from senior/political leaders
and adjacent units, and little hope for success, then a strong consequentialist
argument can be made for the leader to abandon the war as a lost cause and to work
from outside the system instead.We contend, though, that if a leader
concludes that his own military service must be abandoned on ethical grounds,
he is morally obligated to aid the plight of soldiers by working outside the
military to find resolution to the conflict.As to how these factors specifically play into the determination
of an ethical course of action for the junior leader we cannot say as such
discourse unfortunately goes beyond the scope of this paper.Additionally, attempting to prescribe
specific behavior in such a complex scenario would be irresponsible as well as
embody the very oversimplification of the problem that prompted us to write
this paper in the first place.However, we offer these factors and
considerations as an avenue for future discussion, for academic and practical
purposes.

A final consideration that plays into the
junior leader’s ethical decision making, that is often not spoken of enough as
it does not fit cleanly into a precise analytical formula, is the more human aspect
of leadership; the bond between the leader and his soldiers.

LOYALTY TO TROOPS

Although it is tempting to consider
our men and women of the military larger than life heroes, doing so is rather
misleading.In fact, placing our troops
on such a pedestal allows many to detach from the reality that very few join
the military for the sole purpose of protecting the nation.The vast majority of young men and women who
enter the military are seeking a better lifestyle than that from which they
originated, and many are simply trying to collect money so they can go to
college.In our experience, most of our
soldiers will be the first in their families to go to college.Instead of viewing soldiers as a group, as a
population of dedicated freedom fighters, we must view our country’s soldiers
as people, as individuals with the same concerns and fears that we all
have.If our troops are heroic, it is due to the fact that they carry out their deadly
orders in spite of their fears.Working
with troops every day allows one to develop a personal relationship with each.Some might even put this relationship on the
same status as that of family.If we
return to the previously mentioned dilemma, we see that a third variable has
been input.Instead of a conflict of
loyalties to the orders of those above the junior leader, there are two other
conflicting values—loyalty to one’s own moral code and loyalty to the troops entrusted
to his care.Therefore, the oft-asserted
claim that leaders ought to simply get out of the military when faced with a
morally ambiguous or unjust war is rendered an even more difficult option than
before.The leader who views his troops
as family now must determine whether to participate in an unjust war and remain
as a moral standard for his soldiers or to remove himself from the situation
altogether.If the leader views
resigning from the military as an option, the question once again transitions
to a utilitarian one.“When does the
good I can do for my soldiers no longer outweigh the negative impact of
participating in an unjust war?”Additionally, the leader must weigh the obligation not to abandon his
soldiers in their time of need against the duty not to lead them in an unjust
cause.

WHEN TO GET OUT?

It should be understood
that leaving military service before one’s contracted obligation has expired is
not as easy as saying, “I quit.”A
service member who chooses not to complete his term of service, especially in a time of war, is
subject to incarceration and a less than honorable discharge.Furthermore, his sworn duties to defend the
Constitution and to obey the legal and moral orders of the officers appointed
over him are responsibilities that cannot be dismissed as trivial. Even so, we do not argue that one should never
resign from the military in the face of an unjust war.Surely, there are situations when continued service to an unjust cause would be more immoral
than the negative impact of abandoning the soldiers left to one’s care.Readily available examples of immoral service
are the senior and junior officers who carried out the orders of Adolf Hitler and
Saddam Hussein.The recent US-led
invasion of Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein is a more
ambiguous example, for which we feel it is not possible to prescribe specific
ethical conduct for all junior leaders.It is enough to simply say that there are moral dangers in a soldier
acting with absolute autonomy, or conversely, with absolute obedience and that
the proper ethical response, especially for the junior leader, needs to be
found somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, with careful consideration
of the just war issues and implications that we have discussed thus far.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, we
have analyzed the moral dilemma of permissible conduct once a junior leader
finds himself ordered to take part in an unjust war.The primary dilemma concerns the sworn
obligation to support and defend the Constitution of the United
States versus the obligation not to take
part in an unjust conflict.The most
pressing component of this problem is a leader’s duty to his soldiers not to
abandon them when they most need moral, courageous leadership and the
obligation not to participate and/or lead them in the unjust war.We conclude that, in some cases, the
utilitarian net good achieved from an unjustly begun conflict and the moral
obligation to soldiers outweighs the immoral act of participating in an unjust
war.Therefore, for those who claim that
soldiers and leaders should simply “get out of the military” when they are involved
in an unjust war, we remind you that the plausible solutions are not so
simple.The military is comprised of
people, our family.Certainly, an
officer can resign his commission, and a Non-Commissioned Officer can break his
enlistment contract and perhaps endure imprisonment and/or fines.However, this is probably rarely the most
effective solution, as these actions would leave our soldiers without the moral
leadership they deserve.

Most of us can
agree that there are occasions when it would be preposterous to resign one’s
commission, and there are still other situations when it would be immoral to
continue service.However, determining
exactly where that line exists is not answerable for everyone in an academic
essay.Ultimately, it is up to each leader
to decide when the good he can do in an organization no longer outweighs the
negative impact of continued support to an unjust cause.